Party President announces 20 member working committee, new office bearers will be announced
Amid the ongoing discontent in the Trinamool Congress, party president Mamata Banerjee on Saturday revamped the party structure, forming a 20-member National Working Committee. With the announcement of the working committee, all the existing posts of party office-bearers including national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee have come to an end. The party may make new appointments in the next few days.
Besides Ms. Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, the committee includes loyalists considered close to Ms. Banerjee. Seven senior party leaders, including Abhishek Banerjee, were present at the meeting at Ms. Banerjee’s Kalighat residence. The leaders authorized the party president to take decisions in the best interest of the party. During the meeting, Ms. Banerjee spoke and came out with a list of working committee members.
About half a dozen ministers of the state government, including Partha Chatterjee and Firhad Hakim, along with leaders like Amit Mitra, Subrata Bakshi and Sukendu Shekhar Roy have been included in the working committee. Former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and former Congress leader Rajesh Tripathi, who recently joined TMC, are also members of the working committee. Birbhum district presidents like Anubrata Mandal and Dhanekhali MLA Asima Patra, who don’t have much to add to the party’s national ambitions but are staunch loyalists of the chief minister, also find a place in the committee.
However, leaders like Sushmita Dev and Luizinho Faleiro who were recently inducted into the party and given a Rajya Sabha berth have not found a place.
In another development, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday prorogued the West Bengal Assembly with effect from February 12, 2022, a move that may aim at adjourning the proceedings of the state assembly until the state’s ruling party is at home. Would do it The budget session of the House usually takes place in February. While reading out the list of 20 working committee members, senior Trinamool Congress leader Partha Chatterjee said, “There is only one position as of today, that of Speaker Mamata Banerjee.” , Mr Chatterjee also said that the party president has been authorized to nominate party office bearers in due course.
Ms. Banerjee was unanimously and unopposed as the president in the party’s organizational elections held on February 2.
Saturday’s developments assume significance as differences between the old party leaders and the new leaders led by Abhishek Banerjee were becoming increasingly clear and visible, especially on social media. Party sources said Mr Banerjee had also expressed her desire to step down. as National General Secretary. “Working committee has been constituted, no other issue has been discussed,” Mr. Hakim told reporters after the meeting.
There have been rumblings of rift over the past few days with TMC leaders blaming election strategy firm I-PAC for the differences. However, the situation seemed to be spiraling out of control on Friday, when leaders close to Mr. Abhishek Banerjee and some members of TMC’s First family openly took to social media to call for a “one person, one post” system in the party. Though the party president had announced the idea of ’one person one post’, the party could not implement it holistically.
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